The Agile-Lean-Life

The only goal setting strategy that really works in the 21st century

There are seven steps in the AgileLeanLife Goal Setting Framework:

1. Define your vision list

2. Prioritize your vision list

3. Develop life stories for 5 – 7 items on the top of your list – specify what exactly and why

4. Build a Goal Journey Map to build a superior strategy and define the process

5. Use branching and forking to stay flexible with alternative paths

6. Organize the superior execution with a 100-day plan and bi-weekly sprints

7. Considering all the principles of the AgileLeanLife Manifesto

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Start with a life vision

Today no plan survives contact with reality.

It is very naïve to expect that you can just write down what you want out of life in a linear way and it will happen/and this will make it happen. Even if you do have a sound strategy and fight for it.

YOUR AGILE AND LEAN LIFE VISION

To define your life vision, you should answer three simple questions:

1. Who do you want to become (your personal evolution)? … and make your ideal-self persona.

2. What do you want to experience in life (and how to enjoy it)? … and make a list of it.

3. What kind of a legacy do you want to leave (what will you create)? … and write down a strong emotional statement.

WHO DO YOU WANT TO BECOME?

Your actual self is who you are at the moment. It represents the attributes you currently possess. The ideal self is the person you want to become. The ideal self is what motivates you to change, improve and achieve. When writing down your life vision, you should definitely include who you want to become as a person. It’s about your personal evolution and about how would you like to be remembered.

When making a persona you should look at the following elements and decide which one you want to keep, which one to strengthen, which one to develop and which one to get rid of.

• Beliefs

• Values

• Behavioral patterns

• Talents

• Knowledge

• Skills

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO EXPERIENCE IN LIFE?

There are three main purposes in life. One is to evolve (grow, improve, learn…), the second is to experience as much as possible, meaning enjoying life, and the third is to create and leave a legacy

There are seven life areas you should start with and brainstorm further on.

• Body (diet, sports, sex, food, massages…)

• Relationships, emotions and romance

• Money and wealth

• Career, achievements and respect

• Fun, creativity and travel

• Spirituality

• Technology

The list of what you want to experience should be long and thorough (your bucket list). You can browse the internet, magazines, listen to your inner voice and so on

WHAT KIND OF A LEGACY DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE?

Your greatest inspiration in life and a very important part of your life vision should be your plan for making the world a better place.

THE AGILE, NOT LINEAR WAY

The most important fact you have to be aware of when setting your life vision is that your life vision is not a linear plan or path. It’s a list of who you want to become (personal evolution), what legacy do you want to leave (creating a better place to live) and what you want to experience in life (how will you enjoy it).

Your life vision is a list that should constantly throw you out of your comfort zone and routine, and remind you of what else you want to experience in life. The list is your reminder to not waste your life and to live it to the full.

You should regularly update your list and happily tick things off when the environment enables you to improve yourself, create or experience something new. Well, your environment or your personal will, or both.

THE VISION IS AS IMPORTANT AS THE DRIVE TO ACHIEVE IT

Personas – Know what you want

One thing in life is sure. The more exactly, accurately and the sooner you know what you want from life, the easier your will get it.

Knowing what you want in life allows you to focus on that thing only. If you are lucky and the environment supports you to the point where you can invest 10,000 hours into your talent development, then you can become a real Outlier.

Vision list prioritization or which goals to pursue first

With all the items on the vision list, there is a big question of how to prioritize things you want to achieve and experience. How to decide what to follow first. Which goals should be your number one priority?

FACTORS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER WHEN DECIDING WHICH GOALS TO PURSUE FIRST

I suggest you prioritize items on your vision list and decide which goals to pursue first based on the following factors:

1. Your current life situations

2. What’s currently the most important thing to you

3. What kind of opportunities are showing up in your environment

4. What kind of key relationships you currently have

5. Your internal resources and external resources

6. Your greatest strengths and weaknesses

7. Your yearly focus

When you decide for priority items to go after, you have to take several factors into consideration. You prioritize items on your vision list based on the following factors:

1. Your current life situation – Your current life situation greatly influences what you should consider to be your priorities. Life areas in which you suck or are dragging you down should definitely become your priorities. Different life situations (like expecting a baby, losing your job or getting ill) all severely influence your priorities. We must also not forget any biological or other limitations. Write down your current specific life situation and how it influences your vision list items.

2. What’s currently the most important thing to you – At every point in life, you have a slightly different set of values. You always feel that achieving something particular is the most important thing to you at a certain time. When you are young it may be partying, then acquiring your own home, then wisdom in later years, and so on. Ask yourself what is currently most important to you when you’re prioritizing your vision list.

3. What kind of opportunities are showing up in your environment – Setting goals is not only about you, but also about the opportunities that show up in your life and about the people that currently surround you. You want environment paradigms and your key relationships to greatly support you in achieving your goals. Nobody can succeed alone; you need a lot of outside help. So analyze market trends, how people that surround you can help you, what are currently the greatest opportunities in your life, and so on. Make sure you always consider these things when prioritizing your goals.

4. What kind of key relationships you currently have –Your key relationships have an especially important influence on your goal setting and goal achieving. You become the average of the five people you spend most time with. Thus you want to spend your time with ambitious people who support you. And you want to make sure that positive traits of other people have a positive influence on your goal achieving. For example, if you just started dating a very sporty girl, of course improving your fitness is a smart goal. You will have big support in achieving that goal. Analyze how your current relationship can empower you in meeting your goals, what new relationships you must forge and maybe even which relationships to abandon.

5. Your internal resources and external resources – When you begin with anything new, you suck at it. You have no knowledge, skills and experiences, so goal setting is very hard. Slowly, by acquiring knowledge and experience, you can more specifically define your goals and daily activities that lead to your goals. That’s important, because you can’t focus on several new areas at once. Every big goal or improvement takes an enormous amount of time, effort and other resources. One big goal, several small goals is the rule. You want to be making ten steps in one direction, not one step in ten directions. Internal and external resources also define how much you can expose yourself to new investments and how fast you can progress towards your goals. The more resources you have, the bigger risks you can afford and the more you can invest into your progress. Count that in when you prioritize.

6. Your greatest weaknesses and strengths – You always have some weaknesses that are preventing you from progressing in life and achieving your goals. For example, starting your own business could take you a big step further in terms of finances and career, but you’re really scared to start your own business, because you’re afraid of uncertainty. These kinds of weaknesses should always be a priority to be dealt with. Your fears show you where you have to grow in life. Sooner or later, you have to face what you fear. The sooner you do it, the better. And of course, you need to build your success on your greatest strengths.

7. Your yearly focus – Last but not least, you have to focus your efforts. Every year you should focus on one or maximum two areas of life you want to really improve. Greater focus means greater progress. So you should always choose one life area every as your focus every year, influencing how you re-prioritize your vision list.

When you’re prioritizing your life vision items, you should have 3 – 7 items that you plan to realize and meet in the next 3 – 12 months. You should print out a list with these chosen items and put it in some visible place.

In the next step, you need to add a strong why to every one of the prioritized items. You need to add a powerful emotional charge to every one of the selected items. You do that by developing every vision item into a short life story.

Goal journey mapping – The superior strategy to achieve any goal

Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) is a very popular technique in business to better understand the purchasing process from a customer’s perspective

I call it Goal Journey Mapping (GJM) and it’s the most important and the most demanding step in the AgileLeanLife Goal Setting Framework.

To summarize the steps in the framework, you first define your life vision, then you prioritize the list and select 5 – 7 items from the list. For the selected items, you add a strong why with short life stories, and in the final step you develop a Goal Journey Map out of the short life stories.

A well-prepared Goal Journey Map considers setting a superior strategy, following the smart work philosophy and also putting in daily hard work. A Goal Journey Map is a system and a process.

GOAL JOURNEY MAP ELEMENTS

In general, a Goal Journey Map should cover 10 different elements. I call it a general GJM template. Nevertheless, you should stay very flexible about which parts of the template you use for different kinds of goals. Big goals require all ten elements, small goals maybe only an element or two.

There are only two ways when it comes to your goals. You can be serious about achieving your goals and completely commit or you can be only joking around, wasting time and slowly turning into a zombie. I hope you decide to follow your dream life and put all the energy into preparing the Goal Journey Map(s) for your life goals.

A Goal Journey Map (potentially) consists of the following elements: Ảnh

1. Life story – The final goal you want to achieve and why (all the rewards)

2. Process phases – Different phases you have to go through, like educating yourself, searching, finding your fit, executing etc.

3. Process with milestones – Repeating actions that lead to micro-goals and then to the final goal

4. Supporting environment – Key relationships, trends, motivational installations and other changes

5. People – All the people who are involved in you achieving your goals (influencers, blockers, mentors)

6. Insights and Minimum Viable Experience – Experiments for validated learning

7. Metrics – How you will measure your progress in different process phases

8. Feedback mechanism – System for gathering feedback from yourself and your environment

9. Risk-reward factor – Potential barriers, risks, fears and unanswered questions

10. Branches and forks – Potential small and big adjustments to the strategy

A SHORT LIFE STORY

A short life story is the simplest part. On top of your Goal Journey Map, you write a short life story you want to experience. It’s a short statement describing very clearly the final goal you want to achieve and especially why. By adding a powerful why, you should add a strong motivational charge as well as list all the rewards and benefits you will enjoy when you achieve the goal.

PROCESS PHASES

In the next phase, you should define the process stages you will go through

They are more or less standard phases. If you are a beginner, you start at the beginning, if you aren’t new to the thing you want to achieve, you may have already passed certain stages. The process phases are:

1. Acquiring general knowledge and preparing a Goal Journey Map

2. The search mode

3. Finding your fit and sticking to it

4. Identity shift and becoming a better version of yourself

5. The execution mode and very specifically defining a new set of metrics

The first three phases (called validated learning) are oriented towards learning about yourself and what your preferences are, gaining insights about the topic or life area you want to improve, learning about the environment and building yourself proper support, performing small experiments and constantly improving your strategy. You learn, you experiment, you search and you slowly build a metrics framework.

The last two phases are focused on execution. After you exit the search mode you know the process that will lead you to success very well, all you have to do is to put in all the hard work and trust the process. The first three phases usually take 3 – 12 months and the last two up to several years. But then you can finally succeed overnight.

PROCESS WITH GENERAL MILESTONES

The process is all about daily repeating actions that lead you to micro-goals, and the sum of these micro goals you achieve then leads to the final goal.

In the validated learning phase (knowledge, search, fit), the process includes things like:

• Books you read, courses you take and seminars you visit (number, frequency, insights)

• People you talk to (number, frequency, insights)

• New things you try and experiment with (number, insights, ideas for new experiments)

• Building yourself a new environment to support your goal (notifications, apps etc.)

• Simulations, strategies, pivots and any improvements to your Goal Journey Map

In the execution phase (identity shift, execution), the process includes things like:

• Daily actions and discipline to achieve your goal

• Regular adjustments to your strategy based on the feedback

SUPPORTING ENVIRONMENT

Achieving a goal you’ve set for yourself is unfortunately not only up to you. It’s also up to your environment. You can’t succeed alone at anything. You need a strong supporting environment.

The environmental elements that greatly influence your capabilities to achieve a certain goal and how fast you’ll get there are:

• Your key relationships – spouse, family, friends, boss, coworkers, mentor

• PESTLE factors – political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental factors

• General market trends – financial markets, job markets etc.

• Your company culture and your office space

• Your family culture and your home

• The right timing (timing is everything)

• Other elements (religion, infrastructure, infostructure, motivational installations etc.)

Mind the process phases

There are five phases in the process:

• Empathy or the search mode (in lean start-up, this is called customer discovery)

• Stickiness or finding your fit (in lean start-up, this is called retention)

• Virality or becoming an evangelist (in lean start-up, this is called referral)

• Revenue or reaping the first rewards and making a plan (in lean start-up, this is called a business model)

• Scale or the execution mode (in lean start-up, this is called explosive growth)

EMPATHY OR THE SEARCH MODE

The first phase is the empathy phase or, as we know it in the Agile and Lean life, the search mode

The most important thing in this phase is to have an open mind as well as to be very gentle and tolerant towards yourself and others. Your most important skill in this phase is empathy.

You’re starting something new, you don’t know the territory, you only have assumptions.

What you need is to be excited over experiencing new things in life, you have to feel the adrenaline and energy because you’re trying something new; and you have to start experimenting and testing.

You also have to be very tolerant toward yourself. You need to be aware that you’re going to fail. Some experiments are not going to work. But if you do it right, then you aren’t failing. You’re learning. It’s called validated learning.

In this phase, it’s also very important to get educated. You need to read as many books as possible. You have to talk to as many people who already did what you want to do

After performing an experiment, you have to make a data-based decision about what you will:

• Stop doing

• Start doing

• Continue doing

STICKINESS OR FINDING YOUR FIT

The second phase is stickiness. You find something you like. You see the first results and you get early wins

You’re getting the first positive feedback from your body, emotions, mind or even external environment. You’ve found something you want to stick to. It’s called a fit. Nice.

Now your focus should be on making a system that will help you stick to your new habits

• Because as you know, motivation lasts only while you’re on your way to the fridge. You have to systematically think and try to reinforce your positive behaviour, build an adequate positive environment and a bulletproof system.

You have to take the time to think how you’re going to stick to your new thing. Your enthusiasm will help you, but it’s usually not enough. You need internal and external aids – new habit reinforcers.

Here is a good visualisation of habit formation that you can help yourself with:

The biggest mistake you can make in this phase is sticking to something that doesn’t work for you.

The second biggest mistake you can make in this phase is giving up. Improvement and change aren’t a linear line, they’re full of ups and downs.

The output of this phase should be a new reward system for yourself and visual changes in your environment. While the aim in the phase before the goal was to find the best fit for you, the goal of this phase is to reinforce your new desired behaviour and stick to it. No goals yet, just thinking about what you should do to reinforce your new habit.

VIRALITY OR BECOMING AN EVANGELIST

The third phase is called virality or becoming an evangelist. That simply means shifting your identity. You have to fall in love with what you do. You have to see yourself as a new person. An athlete. An investor. The perfect husband. An entrepreneur. Father of the year. A good man. Whatever.

There are two main signs that indicate that your identity shift is happening. The first one is that you aren’t shy and reserved about your new habit or identity. For example, if someone asks you if you exercise, you don’t say “I try to, from time to time”, but you proudly answer that yes, you are an athlete.

The second sign is that you start encouraging other people to do the same. You become an evangelist of something.

In our example, that simply means that you proudly tell all the people in your life that you have a new diet that makes you feel great, that you regularly do sports, that you can see the first results and that it feels great. You’re like a talking billboard for the new thing in your life.

The output of this phase is an identity shift. There’s no way of going back anymore, unless something goes really wrong. You’ve reached the tipping point. Bravo.

https://agileleanlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/49-habit-layers.jpg

REVENUE OR REAPING REAL REWARDS

You’re not at your endgame yet, but now you can set S.M.A.R.T. goals. You have enough knowledge, you have enough feedback, you have a new identity and you know the territory well enough to set measurable goals with a time frame. You have a good picture of how long it’ll take to achieve your endgame.

One dangerous thing that can happen in this phase is scaling too fast. You can become too impatient and go into the execution mode too fast. You have to be sure that your foundations are strong, you have to curb your greed and follow the plan to improve step by step. If you try to scale too soon, you can hurt yourself, experience a setback and you’ll have to go back into the search mode to find a way around your new weaknesses.

SCALING OR THE EXECUTION MODE

You’ve found your fit, you’ve built a system to stick to new habits, you’ve made an identity shift and you’ve written down a plan. Now you have to stick to the plan with regular intervals, and still listen to your mind, body, emotions and environment. You never stop listening to feedback.

Personas – Know what you want

One thing in life is sure. The more exactly, accurately and the sooner you know what you want from life, the easier your will get it.

Knowing what you want in life allows you to focus on that thing only. If you are lucky and the environment supports you to the point where you can invest 10,000 hours into your talent development, then you can become a real Outlier.